Artist from Chile hot in LV

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

When Jorge Catoni moved to Las Vegas from Santiago, Chile, three years ago, he was hoping to establish his name in the budding Arts District. He also wanted to build a resume of exhibits - five, if he was lucky - something he couldn't do in Santiago, where contemporary art had yet to take hold.

Today, his bio is filled. He's had solo shows and group exhibits, won local competitions and been awarded at least two public art projects. His art has been featured throughout the Las Vegas Valley and even made it to a gallery in St. Louis.

The day before MTZC Studios opened a February show of Catoni's work, more than a dozen of the modestly priced works had already been purchased.

But a big issue facing curators who book Catoni's work is that they never know what they're going to get for a show. What might have been his hallmark last year is vaguely present in work he might show today.

When Diane Bush, then cultural supervisor at the Winchester Gallery, scheduled him for an exhibit, she assumed it would feature the slightly primitive, detailed abstract paintings for which he was known. Naturally, his multimedia installation show that included sound and slide projections, and red frames with no work in them, was a bit of a surprise.

"The show at Winchester is not what I expected him to do. But I love his work," she recalls. "It was a good show."

That exhibit was Catoni's humorous and aggressive response to curators and collectors who want to frame his paintings.

"It was a really different show," says the soft-spoken and reputedly shy Catoni, 26. He adjusts the visor of his hat to shade his eyes, and grins. "People were sitting on the floor. It was like a joke about art."

The Winchester exhibit, he says, remains among his favorites. He yearns to get beyond his small paintings and create large-scale installation shows that give him free rein. That there is no money in installation shows and his livelihood relies on selling his artwork doesn't seem to bother him.

What bothers him is being identified solely by his older work. Nearby hangs a painting: a yellow acrylic abstract with a network of random lines and sketches, made using black magic markers, pencils, oil pastels and Liquid Paper on a piece of found Masonite. Whether painted a month ago - or a year ago - it's too far in the past for Catoni to identify with it.

Catoni loves to surprise himself. He moves forward even when he's unsure of what he's doing. His Web site - www.ahorcarte.com - is operated by Catoni and Chilean artist Inaki Munoz, and is a way to showcase his progress, particularly his digital work.

"There is a certain level of angst in his work that I enjoy," Bush says. "It's multilayered. He incorporates text. I like his sense of balance, design, composition, color. He has all of the things that make a piece work."

Born in Santiago, Catoni studied graphic design at AIEP, a Chilean vocational/technical institute, and drafting and architecture at the country's Republic University.

The week after graduation, he returned to painting, moved to Las Vegas and had a show within three months. One early Las Vegas show was a mixed-artist exhibit for the Hispanic Museum of Las Vegas.

"We allowed him to enter two works because his work was so fabulous," says Brian "Paco" Alvarez, who now represents Catoni.

Artist K.D. Matheson, who began collaborating with Catoni after seeing his work, says Catoni brought something original to the Las Vegas art scene: "His vision is one of a natural organic progression. That's what caught my eye."

Catoni, now designing T-shirts and working on upcoming exhibits, is beginning to look elsewhere because of the lack of enough places to show his work.

His dream is to return to Santiago, where his mother and two sisters live, do a public art project and establish his reputation there.

Friends see Catoni's frustration living in a country so focused on branding and status. Coyly, Catoni will admit that he's frustrated. "Human Inhumanity," an installation exhibit done by Catoni, Matheson and artist Kate Jackson, zeroed in on politics, power and money.

Catoni lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his father. The Arts Factory is his second home, where he paints at 5ive Finger Miscount (Iceberg Slick's gallery and studio), and he uses an available computer at the Contemporary Arts Collective.

He is the featured artist at TAO gallery, which is scheduled to open the first Friday in June in the space formerly used by the Contemporary Arts Collective. And his canvas works are continuously shown at L Maynard Galleries in the Holsum Lofts, where a Catoni piece recently fetched $2,000.